How To Strip & Clean A Deck For Stain

We considered not even attempting to strip the peeling stain off of our deck and instead try a product like or which promised to just cover up the offending finish. While the step-skipping ease and promised durability of those products was tempting, we personally aren’t complete fans of the rough sand-like texture of Rust-oleum Restore (Home Depot had some samples of it around the store and it’s not terrible but it’s not our favorite). The DeckOver stuff looked smoother and actually almost convinced us, but it’s so new that there weren’t enough reviews to make us feel confident spending all that money on it (we’d potentially need around $500 worth of it since our deck is so huge). So we decided we’d like to try a more traditional route first: staining. Especially since that can hold up around half a decade and also lets some of the pretty wood tone peek through. But to do that, we needed it stripped first. Update: check out the first page of comments for info on why we opted not to power wash it.

We found this and decided to give it a go. It had very mixed reviews on Home Depot’s website, but since we had a back-up plan (DeckOver) we were willing to take the risk. So here were our supplies:

Pump Sprayer (not pictured) – we still had leftover from cleaning our last deck

The first step of the directions was to wet down any surrounding plants to help protect them from the runoff. We don’t have much greenery worth saving around the deck, but I did it anyways. You know me, I’m a rebel rule follower without a cause. Update: We’re folks who don’t even use weed killer (we pick them by hand or embrace them as “flair”) so we definitely didn’t want anything with chemicals that would remain/do any lasting damage. Thankfully this stripping agent is “biodegradable with easy water clean-up.” Wearing a mask while applying it is important too!

Then I combined a couple of bottles of the stripper into the bucket. I thought having them in the bucket would make it easier to dip my roller, plus I could work faster with more than 1 gallon poured out at a time.

The stripper is pretty gloopy (a technical term). It was a bit more watery than paint. Maybe gluelike? I imagine it to be what porridge looks and feels like. But hopefully not what it smells like. Otherwise Goldilocks has terrible taste in stolen snacks.

But the consistency actually makes it really easy to apply. It’s thick enough not to drip off your roller too wildly, but thin enough to spread nicely.

The instructions tell you to spread it “liberally” over the surface and let it sit for 5-45 minutes. In that time you’re supposed to not let it dry, which is why they tell you to apply on a cloudy day when the temperature is less than 90° and you’re not expecting rain.

As you can imagine, that’s a hard combination of conditions to predict in the summer. I waited a good two weeks for the “perfect day” and even then it turned out to be to sunnier than I had hoped. Stupid clouds never stay put.

The good news is that the sun wasn’t disastrous, it just dried out the stripper faster than it should. But if I spotted a dry spot I just lightly misted it with water (as mentioned in the instructions) and all was right with the world again.

One warning – this stuff is also pretty slippery. I did my best not to walk on it at all, but when I did it felt like it was almost moving under my feet.

That’s when I realized it was. It was slippery because the finish was coming off under my feet. Suddenly my caution turned to excitement. Could this stuff actually be doing the trick?

I figured that was my cue to move on to the next step: scrubbing (it had probably been about 25 minutes since I started). Although it was coming off under my feet, I needed to use the stiff-bristled brush to really wipe it away.

It took a little bit of force, but in most cases I could get the finish off with just a couple of swift strokes on each board. It came off in sort of a brown sludge, but after a rinse you could really see how the wood grain was reappearing.

The job went a lot faster once I realized I could hook up my hose to the back of the brush I had bought. It meant I could kinda scrub and rinse all at the same time, which made it easier to see the progress I was making.

The scrubbing part was definitely the longest part of the process. It took me about 45 minutes to do my first pass, and then I went back and spot scrubbed parts that I had missed or that took a bit more oopmh. Even then it took two or three rinses to make me feel like I had actually gotten all of the sludge off.

After everything is stripped you’re supposed to follow-up with a cleaner to brighten the stripped wood and, more importantly (to me at least) to neutralize the stripping chemical. I had hoped to use up what was leftover from cleaning our last deck but that brand (Olympic) can only be used on dry decks – and ours was soaking wet at this stage. But the Behr stuff I had bought as a back-up was meant for these situations, so I filled up my pump sprayer (with 1 part water and 1 part cleaner, per the instructions) and sprayed away.

As much as I appreciated not having to wait for the deck to dry, I didn’t appreciate that the Behr cleaner recommended that you scrub the cleaner into the wood after letting it sit for a few minutes. So there went another 20 minutes or so of brushing our giant deck again. It said it would “foam” but I didn’t get much foaming action. Maybe I applied it too thin? I dunno.

But foam or no foam, I proceeded by giving the deck one last good rinse down to hopefully rid it of any residual stripper and cleaner.

It was a bit slow to dry out (since the clouds had decided to park themselves overhead at this point) but you can see how it looks like the process did the trick. It seems to have gotten rid of not just the peeling paint, but a lot of the gray weathering too. It almost looked like new, albeit bleached, wood.

On that particular morning I only did half of the deck. It had taken me about 3.5 hours and I was pretty tired and sweaty (okay, and hungry). Wearing pants and long-sleeves in 85° will do that to ya. But at least my half-attempt makes it easier to see the difference the stripping made. See that obvious line where the sunroom ends?

I was able to tackle the rest of the deck the next day. So here’s the whole thing free of old stain (and after it was able to fully dry out in the sun). Looking good, no?

We’re pretty psyched about how it turned out. We think it’s in great shape to get some stain on it and, better yet, I’m hoping the new boards that we patched it with won’t stand out as much as I feared they initially would.

Our plan now is to stain it with a semi-transparent stain that’s similar in color to the previous rich brown color (it must have been glorious in its day, before it started to wear away – and we think it’ll look great with our brick facade). In fact we didn’t go through the trouble to fully strip the small vertical railings (because it would’ve taken a million years, but also because we liked their color and they were in much better shape). So we’re hoping using something close in color that will make the whole thing look seamless when we’re done.

So yeah, that’s the stripping story. I guess the lesson is that even if you have a rough looking deck, some elbow grease (I think I scrubbed this thing thirty times) might just save it. Either way, we’re pretty pumped about being one step away from breathing new life into this baby. Deck stain, here we come!

Psst- Clara’s . And as usual, the girl’s making us snort milk out of our nose.

I totally agree — I’d just seal the deck too. I like the contrast of the clean deck with the darker rails. Having re-stained decking every few years around a pool when I was growing up really gave me an appreciation for unstained decking.

This looks great! We had a company stain our deck two years ago, and I’m bummed that it’s already wearing in places. It needed some attention this summer, but that’s not going to happen. Next summer, absolutely.

I was hoping to get more years out of it, but it seems like in some areas 2 years is the most you can expect.

I’m also interested in the rustoleum or Behr type finishes this time.

Also — we had sap seep through the wood in some places. I dunno what that was about.

Our first home had it’s deck in about the same shape. The neighbor that lived behind us had 11 tall trees at the end of their property line, some branches we could grab from our deck…. We ended up cutting those branches and my hubby power washed the deck, all that tree sap and mildew on the surface of it made it gross looking.

After it was power washed it looked brand new again. We ended up staining it in a walnut coloured transparent stain. I wanted a transparent stain cause I still wanted the wood grain coming thru…. It looked amazing. But unfortunately we too had to re-stain it every two years. But it wasn’t so much work as the first time.

Thank you for this post! We are at the exact same spot, we have just stripped an old red opaque stain off about 200 sq feet of decking, including railing posting and stairs (uggh) by using stripper and power washing (it has been a PAIN to say the least), taken us several weekends. We are finally up to the point where we can put some semi-transparent stain on it, so I’m hoping your post pops up this week so I can see and make an educated choice!! Love, love, love your deck :)

Such a huge piece of your exterior – what an accomplishment! It’s going to look great when it’s all done! Is the stain you’ll use an all-in-one or do you need some sort of sealer, too? I guess I don’t know much about these things.

Why didn’t you just use a pressure washer. I recently did my fence that was stained red and my pw did a beautiful job of removing the ugy red and now I have a beautiful natural wood fence again. No chemicals needed.

We actually talked to a bunch of people about that and they said since the wood was older it could have ended up fuzzy and splintered, so in the interest of a smoother surface for Clara’s little feet, we opted to put in more labor to keep the boards from getting more beat up.

You were right to not pressure wash. We recently replaced our deck flooring and not the steps and railings, and when we went to pressure wash the stairs and railings to clean them up a bit, and make them match until we got new ones, they absolutely were splintered and fuzzy. Definitely not the way to go if you aren’t replacing them like we are.

The age of the wood factors HEAVILY in the strip versus spray debate. The wood pulp between the grain (or if you cut it down, the rings of the tree) gets soft over time, when you apply pressurized water it blows it out from between the grain leaving the ridges.

The chemicals seem like a harsh solution, but the same applies to removing paint from brick on a house; pressure washing/sand blasting removes the paint AND the protective coating on the bricks. When we had our house inspected the inspector looked closely at the brick and stated that we were lucky is was chemically peeled, and wouldn’t have to ultimately replace all of the brick on the front of our house. Apparently it becomes a sponge and results in moisture damage in the walls of your house!!!

Our deck is stained red as well – we were originally going to pressure wash it, but might do this process instead. The only problem is, because it is stained red, we definitely need to strip all the spindles, railings, fence, and pergola along with the deck floor. Stripping all of that would be impossible! Would you recommend pw for those other parts and stripping for the floor? Any idea how pressure washing would work on spindles/railings?

We wanted to change our deck color from one of the standard (boring) premixed colors to something more rich as well. We used all these same products with awesome results! We then stained it Cordova Brown semi-transparent from Behr (hige Home Depot fans here!). I love love love this color – it’s a a darker brown with a bit of grayish undertones that really makes all the greenery and our inlaid black metal star pop. Since colors don’t show well through computers I don’t know if this matches yours or not but I just wanted to attest to its awesomeness :)

Oddly enough between rinsing it and scrubbing it and rinsing it again and scrubbing it again and then following with the cleaner, it seemed to dissolve – so there thankfully aren’t globs of brown stuff around the deck.

I am telling my parents about this. Their deck needs stripping before they put it on the market and this is perfect. Do you think it would be difficult for an older couple to do (60’s)? I may have to go up and help them. Thanks!!

Wow! I wasn’t sure if it was worth all that work until I saw the photos next to the sun room, and literally gasped OMGeee out loud. That stuff really works! We have 3 biggie decks on our home and we’ve been looking for a solution. Thanks!

We’re in the process of using Behr Deck Over right now! Chose it over Home Depot’s option because of the smoother finish as well! The ease of just cleaning the deck first with their product (instead of stripping or anything first) pretty much sold us since our deck was still structurally sound. I say in the process because you can’t have rain for 24 hours after applying and we’ve been in a every other day rain segment for the past 2 weeks.

We redid our humongous back deck this spring with behr deck over. Part of the deck was new and part was original. It was pretty labor intensive going on (we did the railings as well) but it has been completely worth it. We did a smoother finish and love it. It has just enough texture to it to be non-slip around the pool area. Also the older portion of our deck gave our two younger daughters splinters ins regular basis and I can happily say we had zero splinters this summer!

Wow – that made such a difference! Can’t wait to see how it turns out once you stain it! We need to strip and re-stain our deck, too — it has been stained 2 different colors over time and now it’s starting to peel in a bunch of places so you can see both colors. Nice… May be hard to find a day that it’s under 90 degrees here and not raining for a while, though :(

I did this exact process with the same products last summer to our old deck. My advice is to apply the new stain on a much cooler day because when it is 85 degrees the stain dries and gets sucked in so quickly that I think I over-applied it because now, one year later, it has flaked off in a new places. (I only had time in August, but it’s hard to find a cooler day in Northern Virginia in August!) All in all, it still looks 100 times better than it did before I stripped and re-stained, though – yours will, too.

I think maybe that is true, the stain really has to be applied “just right” for it not to flake. I did mine three years inarow ugh. Then I primed and painted with a SW porch paint, and it’s been perfect for 4 years now.

Can’t wait to see this finished. We have a tiered deck that needs some boards replaced. It’s also painted dark red (so does not match the house) I have no idea where to start lol Google and you guys helps!

We desperately need to do this to our back porch/deck, which needs to be restained, and in fact have been waiting for you guys to do yours so I would get some tips. Or ummm tips for my husband. :)

Question: did you have any mildewed areas? Our deck has dark greenish mildew stains on some boards, and I’m not sure if this would address it. Maybe we need to power wash it first? I will take tips from anyone. :)

We live in Oregon and had a lot of mold/mildew on our deck (which also made it slippery when wet) and the solution is to use household bleach and dish soap. There is a product called 30 sec mildew or something like that but all it is is bleach. Works great.

Be careful if you use bleach! We had a deck built last summer and didn’t get around to staining it until this year and had to clean it first. Dumb me used straight bleach in a sprayer and it fuzzed up the wood. It worked great, but be sure to dilute it! I diluted it about 2 parts water/1 part bleach when I did the steps and it worked just as good. If I had it to do over I would buy a deck cleaner. I then stained it with Behr Semi-Transparent Redwood. Not particularly pleased with the color. The dog’s muddy footprints show on it.

We have used the Rust-Oleum Restore product and it worked ok but it’s already starting to split on the seams and we only put it on last year. We put it on our pontoon boat, top side instead of putting carpeting down.

We tried the Behr stain stripper/cleaner but yours turned out much better! Perhaps we need to give it another go with your instructions…I think our impatience won out. Our deck is about a third of the size of yours though so it should be slightly quicker. My husband was on his hands and needs to apply–so maybe I’ll go out and get him a longer handle for the roller to try and coax him to give it another shot ;) Thanks for the play by play–looks awesome!

Looks great! Wish I could tell you which craptastic stain we used after going through the whole stripping, scrubbing, cleaning process, because ours lasted one whole year. I know it wasn’t an el-cheapo kind, but it was lousy. I’m tempted to go with a solid color acrylic next time, hoping it will hide the leftovers of the lousy stain. I’m sure you’ll read the reviews though, and get a great one!

Wow, that’s a lot of work. We hired someone to strip and restain our wood fence a few years ago. They used a power wawsher instead of chemicals. It looked soooooo great when it was done, but two years later it’s pretty faded again. The 100 degree heat here really beats up wood!

I’m going to tell my dad about this stuff. He’s about to try and strip the old deck in my parents backyard and he’s not sure what to use. It’ll be hard to get a day under 100degrees here in Texas though lol

Looks awesome! We did the same thing this year (so I know how great it feels to accomplish that big of a project).

We have a HUGE front porch, back porch and back deck… so we were at it for a while — although we used a power washer and the sludge, dirt, stain, paint, grime, etc. came right off. We do have a pretty nice power washer, but there were no chemicals (or scrubbing) involved and it was a really “easy” way to remove all the gunky build-up from the railings and spindles too.

So while it looks like you’re all set for this house (at least for a few years) you might consider trying your hand at power washing if there’s ever a “next time”. I know we are super happy with the results!

We heard from a bunch of people that power washing our old deck might cause the wood to “fuzz” and splinter, resulting in it being rougher and looking more beat up, so that’s why we opted for the more-elbow-grease method of scrubbing and cleaning it – in the hopes that our wood wouldn’t get damaged in the process. I think power washing newer wood that’s in better shape might have a better result though (we just heard with old wood it’s better to skip the power washer).

Power-washing can raise the fibers in the wood as they dry, which is what that “fuzzy” feeling is. The step missing is that a power-washed deck should be sanded down afterwards before sealing. It’s the difference between a potentially splintery deck and a smooth deck.

Power wash is the way to go. Our deck got fuzzies and splinters but a good sanding took care of that. (We just used sand paper). It probably was about the same amount of work as you did but just water.
We clean (using a deck cleaner) and stain every 2-3 years because we like the worn look a little. But have only power washed it once in 6 years.
I agree that a see through stain is better. Either way looks nice. Keep up the maintenance and it will never be this much work again.

Oh, the stripper puns. I once had to write an article about concrete block manufacturing, and it included multiple paragraphs about strippers and vibrating tables. There was no room for jokes in the article, but I was sure tempted!

We didn’t want anything that would linger once we rinsed it (ex: chemicals washing off of the deck into the grass = our nightmare) but thankfully everything in the products we picked was neutralized after it was sprayed and wiped down, so no chemicals remain after the job is done. It’s actually listed as “biodegradable with easy water clean-up” right on the label. Wearing a mask while applying it is definitely important too!

Looks really good! Our deck looks a lot like your before pictures and we have been debating what to do with it. I am intrigued by the Deck Over stuff, but the directions for it indicate that it’s necessary to do the same steps that you did anyway. Am I missing something?? I want to take the easy route, but I don’t want to screw it up.

We thought the steps said just to clean it (which can be done in a much shorter time since the stripping was the harder part). We didn’t think you had to strip anything before applying DeckOver. Anyone else know?

Oh yeah, that makes sense if it’s flaking or peeling you’d have to get it smooth. Ours was mostly smooth, just worn really really far down, so I think it could have been cleaned and DeckOvered without the stripping, but if you literally have flakes of paint or stain coming off that would be necessary to have a good “base” for the new coat of DeckOver.

What a difference! The new boards really blend in much better now. Can’t wait to see the final result.

One question since I have only ever had concrete pads/patios: is a wooden deck something you have checked out as part of your home inspection, or do you guys just have enough experience to eyeball it and see if it is still in good shape(structurally)?

Has me wondering how these products might work for removing old flaky, peeling paint from a wooden door & trim (exterior)… Know you guys have painted several doors, is it just best to sand them? This guy, bless his heart, is in rough shape where layers of paint (and perhaps, the incorrect paint to begin with) are involved…

I would first check it for lead paint (danger!) and then if it’s all clear I would try sanding it first just because scrubbing vertical surfaces with stuff made for deck floors might be rough. Hope it helps!

I couldn’t imagine not power washing the deck. Once you hit the wood too close with high pressure, or maybe you hit your toe, you’ll never make that mistake again. Glad you guys are back in to work & the deck looks fantastic.
-p

Ugh! The top image is what our deck looks like right now… I am not looking forward to this project, but it has to be done, we did it five years ago and it has to be done again :-( I think we’ll use the Berh stripping product too

Wow, it looks great. I know that was a lot of work but it’s going to be worth it. After everything was stripped and cleaned, the patchwork part barely even shows in the photos. I’m betting it just about disappears altogether once you get the stain on.

I went to Home Depot recently to buy something to strip an old chair I got for an upholstery class, and said to the greeter, who was this jovial, older man in his late 50s, early 60s, “Hi, can you tell me where I can find a fast-acting stripper?” He says, “Honey, I ask myself that every night.”

Awkward :o/

Your deck looks fab. I was nervous some of the wood was cracked or warped but it’s in great shape. Can’t wait to see it all stained.

I’ve always admired how you go about projects around your home. This one rubs me the wrong way though and prompted my very first comment. I’m surprised that you went this route considering how environmentally friendly you’ve proclaimed to be in the past (i.e. Ms. Meyers, low-VOC paint, etc.) I’m sure there are better options than going with a highly toxic stripper. I’m really concerned about your readers now taking this information and pouring gallons of chemicals into the earth.

We’re folks who don’t even use weed killer (we pick them all by hand or embrace them as “flair” – haha!) so we definitely didn’t want anything that would remain or do any lasting damage. So if you follow the link to that stripping agent you’ll see that it’s “biodegradable with easy water clean-up.” Chemicals washing off of the deck into the grass = our nightmare, but thankfully everything in the products we picked was neutralized after it was sprayed and wiped down. Wearing a mask while applying it definitely is important too! We’ll add an update to the post to spread the word :)